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United Nations
University

Cities in the 21 st century - The urban half

Figure

At the dawn of the 20th century, the world was largely a rural
place - fewer than one person in seven, it is estimated, lived in an urban area.
By the end of this century, a few short years away, we face the prospect of a
global population that is half urban. By far, most of this growth will occur in
the already overcrowded and unmanageable cities in the third world, particularly
in those huge urban conglomerations known as "mega-cities."

The current problems of the world's largest metropolises, and some
of the long-term implications for their growth and development, were the focus
of a Symposium on the Mega-City and the Future held in Tokyo in October 1990
under the joint sponsorship of the United Nations University and the Population
Division of the United Nations. The meeting brought together some 40 experts in
various aspects of urban life - environmentalists, geographers, economists,
engineers, social scientists and others, including elected city officials and
representatives of international organizations - for four days of discussion of
the major issues confronting the mega-city today. This issue of WORK IN PROGRESS
is based largely on materials presented at that symposium.

Mega-City New to History

The mega-city is a fairly recent phenomenon in human history. At
the beginning of the 19th century, the largest city in the Western world was
London, with just under a million people, whereas in Asia, Tokyo had just over
one million; Paris had about half a million and Osaka had roughly a little more.
A hundred years later, at the onset of the current century, there were 11 cities
worldwide with more than a million inhabitants - most of them in Europe and
North America. By the year 2000, it is estimated that there will be a total of
24 cities around the globe with populations in excess of 10 million. Eighteen of
these mega-cities will be in the third world.

The mega-cities, it was observed at the symposium, often tend to
have more in common with each other than their rural hinterlands - whether in
poor or rich nation. More and more, there would appear to be a kind of urban
pathology that crosses ideological, economic and cultural lines. Life in a large
city - whether New York, Paris or Calcutta - is too often seen, in the words of
Aprodicio Laquian in his overview of world cities, as "dehumanizing,
corrupting and degrading." Om Prakash Mathur further argues that in the
third world the mega-cities offer "the worst forms of visible
poverty" with their slums, squatter settlements and unsanitary living
conditions.

Against this justifiably negative perspective, there is the
countervailing view of the city as a positive force in human history. The famed
French historian Ferdinand Braudel likened towns to "electric
transformers" that accelerate the rhythm of exchange and constantly
recharge human life. The large metropolis and its environs, it seems clear, is
where the latest advances in micro-electronics, computers, communications and
other scientific progress are most likely to be generated. It also seems
indisputable, as Andrew Marshall Hamer of the World Bank noted at the Tokyo
symposium, that the new arrival in a city, on average, will do better
economically than had he stayed back in the impoverished countryside.

While the movement from countryside to city has been going on
throughout this century, its escalation to crisis proportions is largely a
post-World War II phenomenon - with a rapid growth in metropolitan areas in all
parts of the world. Previously, it was the rich industrialized countries of the
north which were urbanized, while the poor south was predominantly rural. This
has been changing rapidly over the past several decades due to the continuing
rural flight of millions into the teeming already crowded cities of the third
world.

In Asia alone, it is estimated that the second half of the 20th
century has seen more than three-fold increase in urban inhabitants. Not all of
this, of course, is the result of migration; estimates vary widely as to how
much is due to migration, how much to natural increase. Whatever the true
figure, however, it is the migrants who are the most highly visible on arrival,
and more demanding on most public services than new babies.

The rapid growth of cities everywhere in the developing world
raises questions about what rate of urban growth should be supported. What are
the limits of urbanization? What should be the proper spatial distribution of
human activities - which affect transportation flows and thus energy costs.
These were the sorts of questions the mega-city symposium sought to address.

What Is a Mega-City?

There was general consensus at the Tokyo meeting that a definition
of a mega-city based merely on population size would not suffice. There must
also be some fundamental criteria that distinguish it from other large cities -
and these would probably be linked to the city's position in the urban
hierarchy, both of the nation in question and in the international city system.
A mega-city needs to be defined, therefore, in light of its role as an economic
and political centre. There was further recognition that what was being
discussed were not just mega-city problems - rather they were often problems
shared by urban areas generally, and thus were concerns impacting more or less
directly on half of humanity as it enters the 21 st century.

The symposium highlighted the various forms that the urbanization
process has taken in different countries and regions of the world. In Asia,
where the flight to the cities has been most extensive, population density is
not only an urban characteristic - indeed, the Asian countryside supports some
of the densest populations anywhere. As a response, several countries of the
region have sought to encourage decentralized urbanization. This phenomenon is
discussed in the Indonesian context by Terence McGee in an excerpt from his
Tokyo paper.

In Latin America, economic development has tended to concentrate
in the major ports where the European colonialists arrived - Buenos Aires,
Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro. Yet other, less well-known Latin American cities
have also experienced rapid development and population growth. The mayor of one
such city, Jaime Lerner of the Brazilian city of Curitiba (pop. 1.6 million with
annual growth rate since 1960s nearing 6 per cent), reported to the Tokyo
conference on some of the ways he which his city was coping with transportation
needs.

African urban development has had yet another pattern. Few urban
agglomerations on that continent are seen yet as mega-cities - only Cairo and
Lagos would qualify, although others, like Nairobi, Kinshasa and Kano, have the
potential. Much of Africa's urbanization is due to the "push factor"
from its ravaged and environmentally degraded countryside. Government policies
have more often than not favoured the cities to the disadvantage of the rural
areas. The terms of trade are generally unfavourable to the agricultural sector.
Fu-chen Lo discusses some of the consequences of the collapse of commodity
prices for urban areas throughout the third world.

He also considers some of the implications in the increasing
dominant role played by modern technology in defining the current international
economic paradigm - a process which tends to link the world's mega-cities, often
to the exclusion of their own countrysides, into a new kind of world city
system.

The City as Ecosystem

A new way of looking at the city is offered by Ignacy Sachs and
Dana Silk - one which views the city as essentially an artificially created
ecosystem. They argue that this approach could help planners to understand how
the complex urban environment combines elements of both natural and artificial
systems. Such a perspective would emphasize the many actual and potential
interactions between different human activities in urban areas. The Sachs/Silk
article is excerpted from their book. Food and Energy: Strategies for
Sustainable Development, newly-published by the United Nations University
Press and based on the UNU's Food-Energy Nexus project research.

The mega-cities of the world can be divided roughly into two
categories. First, there are the thriving metropolises driven by their role -
financial, political, technological - in the global network. The big urban
centres of the industrialized countries and those of the newly industrialized
economies (NIEs) of South-East and East Asia fall into this category. Tokyo, the
world's largest city, is frequently held up as the "mega-city" that
works. Some of its promise and its problems are discussed here by three Japanese
urban specialists: Masahiko Honjo; Hisatake Togo; and Shigeru Itoh. A case
history of Seoul, a major mega-city of the newly developing nations is presented
by Sang-Chuel Choe.

Whatever their locale and whatever their population ranking, it is
clear from the symposium presentations and discussion that mega-cities around
the world are in a state of transition and will face new and complex challenges
in the 21st century. Their gigantic size, as well as the impressive sum of their
economic, social and cultural activities, will continue to shape the mega-cities
as vital centres of civilization.

The dynamism of the mega-cities can invigorate old institutions
and create new ones needed to cope with the concerns of the 21 st century. But
the complexities inherent in their great size impose difficult policy choices in
addressing the different needs of their constituents, who make up a vast chunk
of humankind today. -
Editor

The pathology of the city

By Aprodicio Laquian

Whether in a rich or poor nation, the urban landscape has many
common, and disturbing, elements. For many millions of its citizens, modern
urban living can be put in Hobbesian terms: it is "poor, nasty, brutish
and short."

The gap between the very rich and the very poor - whether it be
in London, New Delhi, Caracas, or Lagos - continues to widen. In the
industrialized world, the homeless warm themselves on sidewalk subway grills in
front of the apartments and hotels of the very wealthy. In the developing
countries, the continuing flood of poverty-stricken rural villagers into urban
areas are essentially little more than a shift of the poor from an already
miserable countryside to an even more forlorn and despairing urbanscape.

This is the pathology of modern cities, argues Aprodicio
Laquian, a reality that transcends religious and ideological differences. Dr.
Laquian is with the United Nations Population Fund. The following is excerpted
from his paper to the Tokyo Mega-City Symposium. - Editor

In the mega-cities of both industrialized and developing
countries, the gap between the very rich and the very poor seems to be widening.
In 1980, the UNDP estimated that 40 million urban households were living in
poverty. This was projected to grow to 72 million by the year 2000 - a 76 per
cent increase. The polarization of affluence and poverty is seen in more
developed countries as well. US Senator Patrick Moynihan of New York has
estimated that more than half of the babies born in New York City by the year
2000 will be to parents who are on welfare (that is, government assistance). He
blames government policies that cut back welfare assistance for the further
impoverishment of the already poor.

In developing countries, the global recession and economic
difficulties in the 1980s have significantly weakened the capacity of central
governments to respond to urban needs. Hyper-inflation, the debt burden and the
structural adjustments imposed on many developing countries have combined to
make national survival a more pressing problem than that of the cities.

Strain on Infrastructure

Urban infrastructures in most developing country mega-cities have
not been able to keep up with expanding need. In Nairobi, for example, the per
capita spending for water and sewerage fell from $28.00 to $2.50 in 1987. In
Calcutta, about 3 million people live in shanty towns without potable water. In
Karachi, only a third of urban households have a piped water connection. In
Bangkok, less than a third of the people have access to piped water; so many
households have dug wells that the water table has been causing the land to
subside.

The Homeless: From New York to Bombay

Pavement dwellers and the homeless used to be found mainly in
third world cities like Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. Now, an estimated 600,000
to 3 million people in America are homeless, with about 35,000-70,000 in New
York, and 6,000 in San Francisco. The conservative ideology and fiscal policies
of the Reagan administration severely cut back federal grants for social and
welfare programmes. Appropriations for subsidized housing were cut from $33
billion in 1981 to $8 billion in 1988. The effects of such policies have been
hardest on the mega-city poor. In Los Angeles, welfare payments have gone down
by 33 per cent.

In New York, programmes for the homeless have increasingly relied
more on community philanthropy, providing shelters and soup kitchens for the
homeless, transitional housing, and health and counselling. While these efforts
have been able to help a few, authorities and NGOs are finding that quite a
proportion of the homeless are beyond their reach. It was estimated, for
example, that about half of women in transitional housing in New York have a
drug problem. The problem of the homeless in America has reached a point where
President Bush himself has called it "a national shame." The problem
seems to be intractable as it involves so many sectors.

"Smoky Mountain" garbage
dump in Metro Manila, Philippines

The "Metropolitan Solution": What Went Wrong?

In the mid-1960s, the metropolitan solution was hailed as the cure
to mega-city problems. In such experiments as Greater Miami, Metropolitan
Toronto, Greater London, the Bangkok Metropolis and Metro Manila, metropolitan
government provided the comprehensive planning, wider and stronger tax base,
area-wide services, broad-scale representation and participation - along with
administrative efficiency that promised to cope with the problems of the
mega-city.

Barely two decades after the flouring of the metropolitan
approach, however, this solution is in retreat. In 1989, the Greater London
Council was abolished. The Metropolitan Manila Commission was also abandoned
(although here the reasons were due more to national politics than metropolitan
disaffection).

What brought about the weakening of the metropolitan approach is a
complex of factors rooted in ideology, economic recession and civic reactions.
The past two decades have seen the rapid growth of a conservative ideology that
railed against big governments, bureaucracies and higher taxes, while at the
same time hailing popular participation, private enterprise and voluntarism. The
increasing costs of providing metro-wide services, the growing assertiveness of
local units, and the general ineffectiveness of some area-wide solutions further
eroded the capacities of metropolitan governments.

The Pathology of the City

There are few areas where traditional religions and Communist
ideology agree totally: the city as the source of evil is one of them. Recent
developments in urban pathology seem to bear out their dire prophecies about
urban living as dehumanizing, corrupting and degrading.

Even a cursory reading of recent headlines leaves one with the
impression that mega-cities are falling apart. Inner city schools in New York
City are braced for the entry into kindergarten of a generation of five-year
olds prenatally exposed to the drug, crack - "little monsters" with
neurological, emotional and learning problems put under the charge of poorly
paid and ill-trained teacher.

Bangkok and Manila admit that AIDS cases are badly underestimated
even as tourism officials warn against alarmist statements that may scare
tourists away. Tokyo's rapidly aging work force worries about future security at
the same time that younger couples are faced with the counter-pressures of
caring for elderly parents in cramped, over-priced housing or evading their
responsibilities and pursuing a consumer-oriented way of life. Drug-related
bombings and assassinations plague Bogota while gangs battle each other for turf
in Miami, Boston and Toronto. Riots break out in Berlin, Amsterdam and London as
squatters are evicted from dilapidated buildings, or as ethnic conflicts erupt
between Asians and Caucasians.

Recent urban pathologies include rising incidents of "hate
crimes" or bias-related random violence. New York tabloids have
sensationalized gang rape, assault on strangers, and random terrorism of
innocent citizens. So-called "thrill killings" have been known in
Bangkok and Manila. Ethic and religious tensions in mega-cities are indicated by
assaults and boycotts. Live television coverage has given urgency to urban
violence, be it the shooting down of demonstrators in Beijing, tear gas attacks
in Seoul, artillery duels in Beirut or coup attempts in Manila. While there may
be some positive images of mega-cities in some areas, in general they have been
depicted in recent times as violent, decadent and falling apart.

Mega-City Victims: Women, Young, Elderly

Some of the most disadvantaged groups in the mega-cities are
women, youth and the elderly. Women who head urban households are particularly
vulnerable as they try to fulfil the twin roles of income-earner and home-maker.
The young, particularly those living outside the traditional support net of the
family, present enormous problems. The elderly are also victims of the weakening
of family ties; where they do not have sufficient savings, assets or social
security, they find it difficult to survive in the mega-city.

Understanding Dynamics

The social and welfare needs in the mega-cities - in both the
developed and developing world - have not received the attention they demand.
Popular imaginings of the mega-city of the future dwell primarily on
technological marvels: anti-gravity trains, greenhouse agriculture, computerized
home shopping, solar-power cars, etc. In contrast, research and thinking on the
social and welfare aspects of mega-city life harks back to nostalgic ideals of
the small community, the traditional family, reliance on civic conscience,
charity.

It is only natural for a time lag between technology and social
change - and sometimes urban societies seem to be reverting to old norms instead
of adapting to new technologies. But what cannot be ignored is the increasing
deterioration of social life in the mega-cities of this world. There seems to be
an inability to apply some of the marvel and promise of scientific and
technological innovation to the human condition. But if this incapacity
persists, the future of the mega-city - and indeed the future of the human
species - may not be so
bright.

New strategies for urban poverty

By Om Prakash Mathur

There is much anecdotal evidence about the misery of poverty in
big urban centres anywhere in this world - and it is no respecter of a nation's
relative affluence. The poor, the lost and the homeless can be found in
disquieting numbers living out their tragic daily existence in Calcutta, Bogota,
Paris or New York.

One puzzling lack, asserts Om Prakash Mathur, is in the
attention paid to the plight of the urban poor by major research institutions
and government policy makers. Too often, it would appear, policies aimed at
poverty alleviation focus only on national statistics. Such strategies, he
argues, ignore the special dimensions of urban poverty. Poverty in the cities
cannot be simply lumped into the blur of national statistics.

Dr. Mathur, an urban planner specializing in urban management,
is the Director of the National Institute of Urban Affairs in New Delhi, India.
The following is excerpted from the paper which he presented to the Tokyo
Symposium on the Mega-City and the Future. - Editor

Concern for urban poverty in the developing countries is of a
comparatively recent origin. Some claim that the turning point was the annual
address in 1975 by the then World Bank President Robert McNamara, where he drew
attention to the fact that in the developing world "the urban poor exist
in thoroughly squalid conditions, afflicted by malnutrition, devoid of
rudimentary sanitary facilities, lacking employment, possessing minimum shelter
if at all."

Until this address, or perhaps more accurately the early 1970s,
public policy responses did not distinguish between rural and urban poverty, and
paid little attention to urban poverty issues. Most developing countries worked
under the assumption that urbanization was necessary, that it was central to any
economic transformation, and postulated that economic transformation will itself
trickle down and gradually spread out to the different population and income
groups. The potential adverse consequences of urbanization were overlooked.
Government interventions in the urban arena were aimed essentially at removal
and clearance of slums, considered until then the main manifestation of poverty
in urban areas.

1970s, Painful Awakening

The 1970s, however, opened under totally different sets of
conditions and circumstances - with countries painfully recognizing that
urbanization and the manner in which it had come about was not an unmixed
blessing. On the one hand, urban areas - and particularly those gigantic sprawls
coming to be known as "mega-cities" - could result in massive
economic gains and productivity. But they were equally the centres of large
scale poverty and deprivation. More concretely, if we look at it in a historical
perspective, it appears that the development of urban public policy responses
grew out of three simultaneously operating forces:

1. The failure of the developing countries to
anticipate the scale and pace of urbanization, and their relative unpreparedness
to address urbanization issues;

2. The inability of the formal sector to expand and
correspondingly absorb the increasing urban labour force; and

There were two principal schools of thought about the problem of
burgeoning urbanization and urban poverty in the developing countries. One
stressed policies designed to lower out-migration from rural areas. This was one
of the main justifications for the rural development policies of the 1980s. A
second policy response was urban decentralization and development of small and
intermediate-sized cities. The most common instruments were fiscal incentives
designed to alter the location of investment and the subsidization of urban
infrastructures in smaller cities.

Neither of the two policies seemed to have any impact on the
problems arising out of urbanization. Such efforts were frequently undertaken
with little systematic rationale. The doubts that rural development or
industrial decentralization policies could solve the fundamental urbanization
problems led many developing countries to conclude that large urban
agglomerations were a fact of life. They were unlikely to disappear. The
realistic question thus was what to do about the poor population in such cities.

Should there be policy interventions analogous to those designed
to deal with rural poverty - or should there be different policy packages? (It
should be noted here that urban poverty levels seem to be appreciably high in
countries that also have high incidence of rural poverty. In countries like
Bangladesh, Guatemala, Haiti, Ethiopia, Nepal, Burundi, Lesotho, the
Philippines, and Madagascar, both urban and rural poverty rates are extremely
high, exceeding 50 per cent. This places such countries in situations where they
have to make difficult investment choices between urban and rural poverty.)

Facing up to the fact of the growing number of the poor meant,
among other things, improving urban housing, generating employment, and
expanding urban water supply, sewage disposal, and other health and education
services.

First Priority - Shelter

The principal emphasis in the anti-poverty strategies in most
developing countries was on shelter for the low-income groups. Most typical were
so-called "sites and services" projects - where land parcels fitted
with rudimentary urban services were provided to poor people who then
constructed their own dwellings or contributed to their construction. Another
emphasis was on upgrading existing slum settlements, employing largely self-help
methods.

Compared to sites and services and slum upgrading, the employment
generation components of anti-poverty strategies were small. Following the basic
needs strategy, several developing countries emphasized the linkages between
services - such as water supply, sanitation, primary health, education and
nutrition - with poverty alleviation, and established separate programmes for
the provision of services. These programmes were directed mainly at women and
children, considered by many as the "poorest of the poor."

The experience gained in several countries, however, shows that
public policies and programme interventions have made at best a marginal impact
on the urban poverty problems in the developing countries. Sites and services
projects have reached few poor people over the years, and the justification for
such projects is questionable. It remains controversial whether sites and
services projected are, in fact, affordable to the poor - with considerable
evidence that market forces tend to operate against the poor in such situations.
The shelter projects remain unaffordable to low income groups without subsidies.
In addition, access to shelter and urban services is hampered by public
regulatory policies, including planning laws and regulations, building standards
and rent controls.

Community-based Approaches

The last few years have seen increasing reliance in several
developing countries on community-based approaches. In a sense, these constitute
a reaction to the poverty alleviation efforts of the 1960s and early 1970s, when
it became clear that cities on their own could not solve the problem of services
or shelter effectively by slum clearance, relocation and public shelter
policies. Most governments then turned to policies involving development of
sites and services, the upgrading of slums and - more critical - the promotion
of self-help and community participation in poverty alleviation programmes.

Yue-man Yeung, in his study of the linkages between urban services
and "people-based" mechanisms to achieve them,* pointed out that
"the gradual realization of the ineffectiveness of a service delivery
model, i.e. government provided services, has promoted experimental and
innovative efforts to mobilize people's resources towards improving the urban
living environment."

According to him, the main rationale of the experimental
community-centred approach is to make use of community resources for the
delivery of basic physical and social services. Such attempts, he found, require
new community-based styles of management characterized by popular participation.
The services provided in most urban situations - and particularly in the
congested mega-city atmosphere - are often unevenly distributed, and skewed in
favour of high-income communities. (See Ignacy Sachs, "Improving Life in
the L-City," WORK IN PROGRESS, Vol. 10, No. 1). It is therefore a
pragmatic strategy for the urban poor to organize themselves and arrange to
provide and manage the needed services to themselves - in the process preserving
indirectly scarce capital for the government to pursue other developmental
purposes that might also benefit the poor.

Lessons from Community Participation

Several lessons have emerged from the evaluation of poverty
alleviation programmes that are currently operating on a community participation
basis in several countries.

First, it is evident that the nature and extent of community
participation varies: between those where the government has a definite say as
to the content and manner in which urban services are to be improved and those
where the slum settlements organize themselves to make available those services
which the government fails to deliver.

Second, most people-oriented programmes require strong leadership,
which may be formal or informal. Almost all studies point to the need for
improvement in leadership qualities.

Third, one of the main responsibilities of community leaders is to
help the poor articulate their needs in a more effective and organized manner.
In several urban poverty programmes, for example, the package of services does
not reach the lowest socio-economic groups. The real needs and problems of poor
communities are quite different from those provided under the programmes.

Fourth, and final, the activities provided under the various
programmes are generally not diversified enough to cater to a broad spectrum of
needs. As studies point out, this is a consequence of the bias which tends to
favour physical and visible services at the expense of social services specific
to individual communities.

Poverty and the Mega-Cities: The Future

Almost all projections indicate that the urban population of the
developing countries will increase from approximately 1.38 billion in 1990 to
about 1.97 billion by the turn of the century - and cross the 4.0 billion mark
by the year 2025. One of the distinguishing features of this growth will be the
rise of mega-cities on the global space.

In several countries, the demographic weight of mega-cities is
already large and overwhelming. Mexico City now accounts for over 30 per cent of
the country's total population; the population of Buenos Aires is nearly 42 per
cent of the urban population of Argentina. Seoul contains 37.5 per cent of the
Republic of Korea's total urban population.

It also seems evident that the urban poverty situation will worsen
over the years. - and that the mega-cities of the third world will encounter
bigger pressures, particularly in respect of social services. This is evident in
various studies of the young. At the present time, 44 per cent of Bangkok's
population is under 19 years of age; in Cairo it is almost 48 per cent.

With these sorts of burgeoning young populations, the provision of
education and health services is bound to become a major challenge for the
developing countries. But a serious reality to be faced is that these countries
themselves have placed low priorities on precisely these two areas. In nearly 40
per cent of the countries for which data are available, health expenditures are
less than 1 per cent of GNP - and in most of the rest it does not exceed 2 per
cent.

Lopsided modernization and the urban poor

By Ignacy Sachs and Dana Silk

If the globe's current trends in urbanization continue, by the
year 2010-just one generation from now - the poor of the teeming, overcrowded
third world cities will gain a dubious distinction: they will become the new
majority among the world's population, displacing the rural poor.

The backlog of unattended urban needs, point out Ignacy Sachs
and Dana Silk, is so overwhelming and the inflow of people into third world
cities is so great that it is simply impossible to hope to solve the problem by
providing "more of the same." New urban development strategies are
called for, based on social innovation.

The following article is excerpted from the new book by
Professors Sachs and Silk, Food and Energy: Strategies for Sustainable
Development, published by the United Nations University Press. Their volume
is based on the research findings of the UNU's five-year Food-Energy Nexus
Programme (FEN) (1983-88) which was directed by Dr. Sachs. He is Director of
CIRED, the International Research Centre on Environment and Development in
Paris, France; Dr. Silk is a scientist working at CIRED. - Editor

Urbanization is by far the most important social transformation of
our times. In 1800 no more than 3 per cent of the world's population lived in
cities, but by the year 2000 urban dwellers will outnumber the rural population.

The consequences of such a massive population shift are assessed
in diametrically opposed fashion by the supporters and the foes of large cities.
The former emphasize the civilizing role of cities, the high productivity
achieved by industries and modern services thanks to their unprecedented degree
of concentration, the amenities of urban areas (in sharp contrast to the
apparent drudgery of rural areas and smaller centres), and the multiple
opportunities for work and self-realization offered by their inhabitants.

The foes of urban life insist on the parasitic character of the
city, diverting and draining for its own advantage the economic surplus produced
by the countryside. They point to the deep disruption of the urban environment
with the attendant health hazards, the often appalling housing and working
conditions of the urban poor, the endemic unemployment and underemployment, and
the social anonymity resulting from sub-human living conditions.

Some experts have celebrated cities as prime movers of economic
development while others have been much more subtle. Whatever the wonders
achieved by cities with the economic surplus that they have been able to
concentrate, one should not forget that primitive accumulation was largely
through extracting this surplus from the peasantry of today's industrialized
countries and their colonies.

At stake for third world countries is the opportunity to transform
their condition of "lateness" into an advantage. Modern science and
technology associated with a critical analysis of the impasses of industrialized
societies should allow third world countries to find alternative patterns of
urbanization and to implement them at far less social, economic and ecological
cost.

The "Real" Economy of Cities

The ways in which market and non-market economies combine are
quite complex. The informal sector, for example, is often referred to as
"hidden" or "invisible." A better term would be
"statistically unrecorded," as most of the activities in the market
segments encompassed by these names are anything but hidden - they are generally
conducted out in the open. None of these term really offers a suitable framework
to describe the latticework of the real economy.

A closer look at the real economy of the city - a diverse mixture
made up of interconnected markets (both legal and criminal), non-market
household activities, subsidies, distribution of goods, and provision of
services - shows that many of the resources not accounted for in official
statistics are being intensively used by people to build their homes, produce
food for self-consumption or sale, and transform recycled waste into saleable
commodities.

A Bootstrap Operation

What will happen now, in times of crisis? For the bureaucrats from
the ministries of planning or finance, the answer is clear: austerity budgets,
exacerbated by the requirements of foreign debt servicing, means that so-called
"non-productive" investments must be cut to the bone. But difficult
as it is, the situation is not entirely stalemated so long as there are idle,
underutilized or dilapidated physical and human resources that might be used to
produce socially desirable goods and services, without violating the prevailing
budgetary restrictions.

However, self-reliance does not necessarily mean self-sufficiency.
The complexity of the modern world cannot be tackled by decomposing it into an
archipelago of self-sufficient communities, be they rural, urban, or rurban. But
self-reliance in moral, political, and intellectual terms makes people
resourceful and confident. They assume their situation instead of taking a
passive approach. Looking around them, they end up by identifying resources in
their own backyard that could be exploited to bring some relief to their plight.

What Is a City?

Economists have tended to look at cities as the site of many
enterprises, whose concentration creates both positive and negative results, but
requires, in any event, a costly infrastructure. Human ecologists have been
advocating, without much success to date, the study of cities considered as
ecological systems. Most of the studies on urban systems conducted within the
Man and the Biosphere Programme of UNESCO deal with the impact of cities on the
natural environment and its food-producing systems, or they describe in detail
the energy flows inside the city.

Luxury towers facing shacks in Bombay,
India

The approach which we followed in the Food-Energy Nexus (FEN)
Project of the United Nations University was somewhat different. For analytical
purposes, the city was considered as a predominantly artificially created
ecosystem - with paradigmatic analogies in relation to natural ecosystems. Such
a perspective emphasizes the actual and potential interrelations and
complementarities between different human activities conducted in the cities.

Turning Waste to Wealth

Fortunately, in most cities the backlog of untapped opportunities
for transforming waste into wealth is very large indeed. A city should thus be
regarded as an ecosystem with its own potential of latent, underutilized,
misused or wasted resources.

Complex and diverse, urban environments combine elements of
natural and entirely artificial environments. They juxtapose modern factories,
lavish residential quarters, and suburban express-ways with decrepit sweatshops,
sprawling slums, and antiquated public transportation. The same city can provide
an array of environments for different groups, a multiplicity of ecological
niches ranging from cozy to uncomfortable, from healthy to filthy, from safe to
dangerous, from friendly to hostile. These are multi-layer towns, often with a
marked spatial separation - garden cities for the rich, shanties for the poor -
resulting in what amounts to an apartheid society.

Urban Poor: The Worst of Both Worlds

It should be remembered that the urban poor are the main victims
of environmental disruption. In addition to living in conditions of squalor
subject to the pollution of poverty, they are also the most exposed to the
pollution generated by the lavish consumption patterns of the urban elite,
including the increasing affluence of the middle class.

The bridge for many is provided by the TV soap operas with their
consumerist message: watching them from a shantytown is fairly surrealistic. It
forces one to think about the latent explosion of the situation in the dual
cities of the third world produced by lopsided modernization.

Urban Population by Major Regions - 1960 - 2025

Region

1960

1970

1980

2000

2025

World

33.6%

36.9%

39.9%

48.2%

62.4%

Less developed

21.4

25.2

29.4

40.4

57.8

More developed

60.3

66.4

70.6

77.8

85.4

Africa

18.4

22.9

28.7

42.2

58.3

Latin America

49.3

57.4

65.4

76.9

84.4

North America

69.9

73.8

73.8

78.0

85.7

East Asia

23.1

26.3

28.0

34.2

51.2

South Asia

18.3

21.2

25.4

36.8

55.3

Europe

60.5

66.1

71.1

78.9

85.9

Oceania

66.3

70.8

71.6

73.0

78.3

USSR

48.8

56.7

63.2

74.3

83.4

Source:

UN Population
Division

Urban transport and urban growth

By Jaime Lerner

The public transportation system of a city does much more than
merely carry its citizens from one place to another - it can play a major role
in encouraging and controlling urban growth. The availability - or
unavailability - of bus service, subways, and other forms of urban transport -
can be major forces in shaping people's perceptions of their own neighbourhoods
and of their own daily lives.

This is the city planning philosophy of Mayor Jaime Lerner of
the Brazilian city of Curitiba, the capital of the State of Parana. The city has
a population of some 1.6 million, and is situated about 350 kilometres
south-west of São Paulo. Since the beginning of the 1960s, Curitiba has been
experiencing an annual population growth rate of 5.6 to 5.8 per cent.

In the following paper, which he presented at the Tokyo
Mega-City conference. Mayor Lerner discusses the ways in which his city went
about introducing a mass transportation system to meet the new challenges of a
swelling population. His paper was prepared under the auspices of Curitiba's
Institute of Research and Urban Planning (IPPUC). - Editor

Along with its own rapid development, Curitiba constitutes an
attraction pole for migratory flows of the most diverse origins - but
particularly farmers coming from the inland regions of the State of Parana, who
are leaving their land due to a combination of adverse climate conditions and
the increasing mechanization of agriculture.

Average per capita income in the city is on the order of US$1,200
annually. The family income distribution reflects the patterns observed in the
other state capitols of Brazil. A major portion of the population - something
like 80 per cent - belongs to lower income levels (as little as US$500 per
year).

Jaime Lerner, Curitiba's Mayor

The urban planning system implemented in Curitiba helped us to
direct the city's growth, while at the same time trying to act in social areas
by giving access to the needy population to urban transportation facilities.

A planned development process was started in Curitiba in 1970 when
it became apparent that the city was growing both rapidly and radially-outward
from the city centre in all directions. The plan put forward aimed not only at
easing traffic circulation but also at evolving it within a broader land
occupancy perspective. The central area of the city was seen as having limited
rational growth potential, while the commercial and service sectors should be
encouraged to expand lineally along structural axes stretching out north, south,
east and west.

Transport System for Needs Not Cars

For the first time, a new mass transport concept was planned to
meet the needs of a Brazilian city, where routes and land use are more important
than the vehicle using them.

The major avenues in the new Curitiba scheme were designed for
three types of traffic. An outside divided roadway is for high speed traffic.
The central roadway is divided between two lanes: one for slower two-way traffic
streets, and an exclusive central lane for the express bus system.

Along this whole structural route, stations are situated every 400
metres equipped with newspaper stands, public telephones and post office
facilities. This was part of the strategy of encouraging densities along certain
axes reaching out from the central city. It is worth pointing out that the
construction of this triple roadway system avoided many of the headaches of
major public works efforts, with all their intrusive interventions, by imposing
it largely on existing streets and roads - with very little change to the
pre-existing urban fabric. This also greatly reduced costs.

The Strategy of "Land Stock"

Before actually building this road system, the municipality of
Curitiba adopted the strategy of building up "land stock" for the
needy. In this approach, many plots of land were acquired before the actual
transportation routes were laid out. This enabled the city to organize housing
programmes which settled some 17,000 lower income families next to the proposed
new transport facilities. The consequent increase in the price of their
newly-acquired "land stock," with the introduction of modern urban
transport, was therefore counted as an indirect subsidy to those who needed
social integration.

Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue Buses

The integrated transport system was implemented gradually,
initially with only two express routes. By the early 1980s, a decade after the
project was started, the system had five express and three interdistrict routes.
Presently, there are six interdistrict routes and the workers' route, five
express lines and feeder lines connected to all 15 intermediate terminals and
big metropolitan terminals.

The integrated transport system is composed of: express buses
(red); interdistrict buses (green); conventional, or feeder, lines (yellow); and
student lines from the centre to main universities (blue). The interchange of
passengers at the end of the express routes occurs at a big terminal which is
large enough to cope with integration with neighbouring municipalities within
the Curitiba metropolitan area. Passenger interchange within the city confines
is accommodated in smaller terminals built in the scale of the existing
environment.

Shorter Routes Subsidize Longer

There is both physical and fare integration. The passenger pays
the ticket when he enters his terminal and is allowed to cross the whole city at
the price of a single fare. The "social fare" means that the shorter
routes subsidize the longer routes because, in Brazil, lower-income people live
further away from the town centre.

All fare collected by the bus companies are deposited in a
transportation fund which is managed by the municipality. The bus companies
receive their revenue according to the number of kilometres they operate.
Efficient managerial control on the part of the city makes sure that the
performance of the system corresponds to existing demand.

The buses have been designed both with a view to giving comfort
and being able to take on more passengers at peak hours. The terminals were
conceived as public meeting points, city squares lively with commerce and other
attractions. In addition to the bus services mentioned above, there are also
"Selective Buses" from the centre to higher income districts as an
alternative for those who have cars, "Neighbourhood Buses," and the
"Shuttle Service" from the south terminal to the Zoo.

Knowing How It Works

The visual communication which we emphasize (with different colour
buses for example) is important; the population will be able to use the system
effectively to the extent they understand how it works. Simultaneous traffic
control in the central areas of the city helps improve the system performance;
traffic light timing is changed according to circumstances by a computerized
system. Another device, imbedded in the bus lane and triggered by the vehicle's
wheels, keeps the green light on when an express bus is about to pass.

The Bicycle Network

Integrated transport system in Curitiba

In another attempt to improve traffic circulation, we have already
built 53 kilometres of cycleways; in all we plan some 174 kilometres of these
paths for bicycles that will be built within Curitiba's Cidade Industrial
(Industrial City) in the south-western environs of the urban centre along with
other bike paths in the city's leisure parks.

This programme also calls for the implementation of bicycle
parking lots, repair shops, bars, news agents, meeting points and other
attractions along the bicycle networks. Another idea involves the creation of a
"bicycle boy" agency. Using their bicycles, office boys could move
about quickly within pre-established areas, where they would pick up and deliver
mail and small packages for a modest fee. This type of service would aid in
introducing into the work force poor and homeless children aged 14 and older.

A Planning Instrument Not a Problem

We know that the planning of a city never stops - as these areas,
particularly in the third world, are constantly growing. We believe that the
unfolding of Curitiba's integrated transport network offers a good example of
this philosophy.

As the network was put into place, the ratio of green areas per
inhabitant increased - from about one-half a square metre in 1970 to the present
51 square metres per inhabitant. An old gunpowder magazine was turned into an
arena theatre. An abandoned glue factory became the Creativity Centre. An old
army headquarters was transformed into the headquarters of the Cultural
Foundation. All of this reinforces my belief that public transport should be
regarded not only as a problem, but as a planning instrument for better urban
life.

The hub of Japan

By Masahiko Honjo

Since the 19th century Meiji revolution, the development of
Japan has been, in many ways, the story of the growth of Tokyo. Masahiko Honjo
discusses some of the reasons behind the city's dense population concentration -
including the formative role of Japanese railways. He focuses particularly on
post-World War II Japan. Dr. Honjo is the Director of the International
Development Center of Japan.- Editor

Since the end of World War II, Tokyo has become the seat of almost
all central managerial functions in Japan - it controls top decision-making in a
number of sectors, government as well as private. It is the centre of
international business and finance.

· Ninety per cent of foreign companies in Japan
are concentrated in the Tokyo area. From 70 to 80 per cent of financial
transactions - from cheque exchanges to stock sales - take place there. More
than half of bank loans in Japan are provided in Tokyo; about half of all the
nation's bank deposits are accumulated there.

· It is the centre of information. Nearly 60 per cent of
workers in this field - television, newspapers, other media, computer
specialists, big advertising agencies - all are concentrated in the Tokyo area.

· It is the centre of education. More than 40 per cent of
Japanese university students are clustered in the capitol city - although
government policy since the 1960s has tried to discourage student concentrations
in the inner city areas of Tokyo.

Spiralling Land Costs

The ongoing concentration of central managerial functions in Tokyo
has accelerated a race to acquire office space - particularly in the central
business district. To meet the demand, construction of new offices has
intensified in Tokyo, particularly within the three wards of the central
business district - Chiyoda, Chuo, and Minato - comprising an area of about 20
square kilometres. The rising prices within the centre of Tokyo has led
prospective home buyers into an ever widening search in the suburbs of the city
for available land.

The Railroad City

Tokyo's present urban structure is very much based on railway
lines. Two-thirds of Tokyo's commuters are dependent on rail systems. The
railroad forms the skeleton of Tokyo's present structure. It has so far proved
the most effective means of coping with transportation needs which have a very
high peak load at rush hours: an inevitable result of having so many passengers
who must travel at fixed hours, like office and factory workers, students, etc.
In answering such needs, railroads are capable of carrying mass passenger loads,
and concentrating them in stations at key locations. This permits the provision
of a very efficient and high level of commercial and social services at these
points.

Origins of the Railway

Originally, Japan's national railway system was developed to
service Tokyo as the capital. It consisted primarily of trunk lines going to:
the south-west (the present Tokaido line); to the west (Chuo line); north
(Tohoku line); north-east (Joban line); and, east (Boso line). A freight bypass
loop was also established to connect these lines to those within the existing
city boundaries.

As Tokyo expanded, the national railroad system promoted commuter
service for suburban residents through the new rail network. Tokyo Central
Station in the central business district was the hub; inside the loop - this was
the Yamate (now "Yamanote") green line-transportation service was
left to trollies and buses.

As Tokyo grew further, private railroads also came into being,
servicing new commuters. The railroads were requested to start from terminals
along the Yamate loop in order that commuters could be linked to trolleys and
buses at that point. Sub-centres like Shinjuku, Ikebukuro and Shibuya grew as
masses of transferring passengers had to go through these points.

In post-war days, many subway lines were constructed to replace
the trollies within the inner city loop. They were organized in such a manner as
to service the central business district by linking opposite ends of the
suburban railroads at the loop, to aid suburban commuters in their daily travels
into the central business district.

This proved beneficial both to the commuters - by cutting down
their travel time - as well as to the subways: it meant that many passengers
could be funnelled directly from the existing private railroads into the subway
system. The subways thus generated the income needed to pay for the very
expensive costs of subway construction.

Tokyo: Role model for the mega-city of the future?

Tokyo, which may be the largest urban clustering on the face of
the earth (depending on how you count) has often been singled out as the
mega-city that works. It is virtually free of the street crime which has
paralyzed so many other of the world's big cities - in rich or poor
countries. It has an efficient far-flung and rapid public transport system which
efficiently funnels millions in and out of the city daily.

But is Tokyo all that much free of problems? Within the slim
horseshoe-shaped belt of land around Tokyo Bay are some of the densest, most
over-populated urban concentrations on this planet. One out of every four
Japanese lives in this narrow strip of land, only 3.6 per cent of the
country's total lands area. At the UNU Mega City conference, three Japanese
scholars gave their own perspective on some Tokyo's issues as a mega-city:
the unbelievably high real estate prices which shut off the home-owning dreams
of most Tokyo families; the heavy concentration of so much of the nation's
financial, educational and information resources in the capital city, and the
desirability of developing Tokyo as a multi-centred urban structure. (A third of
Japan's college students, a similar of proportion of the country's
newspapers, nearly a fifth of all its radio and TV stations are in Tokyo.)

The presentations on these two pages are taken from papers
presented at the Mega-City Conference by scholars from the Tokyo Institute for
Municipal Research, the University of Tokyo, and the International Development
Center of Japan.- Editor

Generating New Focal Points

The combination of public and private interests enabled the Tokyo
urban rail system to grow very rapidly - and it now handles 2 million passengers
a day. At the same time, the sub-centres established at Shibuya, at Shinjuku, at
Ikebukoro - have reached their own generating potential for further growth. They
have become stronger focal points for commuters, as well as for their
surrounding neighbourhoods. These centres have become important shopping areas
of Tokyo, replete with the latest merchandise from Tokyo, Seibu, Isetan and
other retail giants.

One of Tokyo's many train lines

As suburban development proceeded around Tokyo, the position of
the railroad companies became even stronger. They came into the field of urban
development in a regional context. The railroad companies were in a position
where they could not only plan ahead for the location of new large-scale housing
developments; they could also extend services for the daily needs of the
residents, through a combined system of large department stores at the
terminals, and a chain of shopping centres and supermarkets within their
"territories" in specific directions.

Railroad Station "Hierarchy"

In the interests of speeding up operations, railroads have begun
promoting express service by selecting particular stations for their express
stops. This is inducing a new urban hierarchy along their lines, and a workable
network among the local communities seems to be developing.

The shinkan-sen - the "bullet train" - can be seen in
a similar context. It runs through the so-called "Pacific corridor"
of the Japanese archipelago. This is no longer the fastest train in the world,
but it is still the one with the highest frequency - running a train every five
minutes at peak hours, just like a commuter line. The shinkan-sen can carry
1,000 passengers per train.

Such passenger volume can have a very large impact on the
"super-express" stations along the line, and thus also help
determine the key locations in the urban hierarchy along this important central
corridor.

In the present stage - as evidence at least in the Tokyo mega-city
- there is a change in the notion of the traditional hierarchical system of
cities. Remote areas quickly lose populations, while cities, as subregional and
regional centres, gain more population. In the metropolitan regions, the inner
city loses populations while the outer suburbs grow. In the case of Tokyo, for
example, the population of the inner city has remained at about 8 million, while
surrounding cities like Yokohama grew from 2 to 3 million in a matter of 15
years.

At each point of growth, when the human agglomeration crosses a
certain threshold, new possibilities for further development become open. What
Yokohama can do at the stage of 3 million people is quite different from what it
might have done with 1.5 million. What is important at present, I believe, is to
develop a networking of urban functions among the cities, so that a proper
division of labour can be promoted within a given region.

Equally important, however, is the creation of a decent living and
working environment that meets the needs of those who live within the region.
Consideration of the human aspects is the most crucial issue for the future
development of the mega-city.

"Newest of the Great Cities"

"As a city, Tokyo is not very old. There were settlements in
the region from prehistoric times ... but the history of Edo, predecessor of
Tokyo, really begins at about the same time as that of Boston (in 17th century
colonial America), Edo was much quicker than Boston to become a great city.
(But) Boston contains more physical remains of its very early past than Tokyo
does.... Tokyo is a new city, perhaps the newest among the great cities of the
world. It contains scarcely any buildings from the first two centuries of its
metropolitan existence." Edward Seidensticker, Forward to Tokyo Now and
Then by Paul Waley (Weatherhill, New York & Tokyo,
1984)

The land game

By Shigeru Itoh

The great demand for office space in central Tokyo has led to a
voracious rush by real estate developers for tiny pieces of the city's land
still owned by individuals. This has been fed by the extremely low interest
rates of Japan's bankers. Developers have borrowed money at low interest rates
in order to buy small land parcels at high prices. This ratcheting up of prices
is discussed by Professor Shigeru Itoh of the University of Tokyo. -
Editor

Tokyo is the centre of the Japanese economy - where most of the
nation's final business decisions, domestic and international, are conducted and
concluded. That this is so might be taken, on the one hand, as an argument to
support and strengthen the Japanese economy. On the other hand, It might be
argued that such a monopolar concentration of business functions is stimulating
an exaggerated level of office demand within the central business district.
According to recent reports, the office floor area of four wards in Tokyo's
central business district have greater value than the whole of the office floor
area available in all of Manhattan in New York City.

Land Price "Wars"

The high demand for large office building has inevitably led to
the acquisition of land that had previously been extremely fragmented and
privately owned. All this has stimulated a shift from private to corporate
ownership. But in this process of collecting small and fragmented land parcels,
some extremely fierce land investment activities have resulted.

The interest rates offered by Japanese banks have been extremely
low by international standards. Taking advantage of this, some developers have
engaged in an activity known as "land-price hiking." Such developers
have borrowed money at low interest rates to buy small land parcels at high
prices. These parcels are then pieced together and sold off to larger real
estate agents at much higher prices. Office buildings constructed on such land
naturally must charge very high rents.

Government Countermeasures

Various urban planning countermeasures have been enforced to halt
the skyrocketing office rents and abnormal land prices resulting from the
concentration of business in downtown Tokyo.

One approach has been to construct high quality office buildings
throughout the 23 wards of Tokyo, instead of concentrating such buildings in the
central business district. An example of this is the move of the Tokyo
Metropolitan Government offices into a newly-built complex in Shinjuku. It is
also supporting the creation of several other subcentres for office allocations.

Further Decentralization Needed

The Ministry of Construction now provides "urban
planning" guidance for office and commercial facilities constructed within
the 23 wards of Tokyo. Under their regulations, an increase in office capacity
is granted those who construct free and open spaces for public use, or who
specifically create a traffic route within the building site that is designed to
link in with existing public transportation facilities. But even these efforts
to decentralize within the 23 wards must recognize that any attempt to satisfy
real estate demands in the greater Tokyo area will ultimately lead to increased
public transportation and energy demand, as well as heavier automobile traffic.
What is necessary is an even broader dispersion of business functions to all of
the 23 ward areas, including the waterfront. Unfortunately, in my view, this
approach is strongly opposed by the national government.

The Tokyo Commuter

The extremely long commuting time of office workers in Tokyo has
forced them to accept physical and mental hardships in their daily lives. As the
housing area for Tokyo has expanded to an extremely wide region, the central
government itself has come to acknowledge the deadlock in overcoming the
critical problems of modern urban Tokyo: traffic congestion, urban pollution,
skyrocketing land prices, the panic that might result if a large earthquake
struck.

Such realities and possibilities have led the government to accept
a new viewpoint on Tokyo's vastly spread disorder of residential areas - and to
put a new focus on "living." The National Land Agency, for example,
has designated certain large cities within 30 to 50 kilometres of Tokyo as
so-called "business core cities." The long-term aim is to reform
them into relatively independent cities with their own economic functions,
without total reliance on Tokyo. Such moves should promote the national policy
of nurturing satellite cities and contribute to the dispersion of activities and
the creation of new
housing.

Shaping Tokyo for the future

By Hisatake Togo

Thethree wards of Tokyo's central business district
have a daytime population of some 2.5 million. As night falls, nearly nine out
often people leave for their homes elsewhere, on packed commuter trains which,
every year, deposit them farther away from their downtown place of work. The
need to decentralize the business community now so tightly and expensively
packed into downtown Tokyo, argues Hisatake Togo, is an urgent priority for
Japan. Dr. Togo is Managing Director of the Tokyo Institute for Municipal
Research. - Editor

The major administrative task for Tokyo, as far as its urban
structure is concerned, can be simply put: to transform the present centralized
structure into a multi-centred one that balances both work and home - and to
look forward to a 21 st century Tokyo that is a pleasant city in which to live.
Such a multi-centred structure would check the further concentration of business
functions in the inner city, disperse these functions to sub-centres, and
produce a city in which the relationship between workplace and home are more
rationally balanced.

This concept has been made clear in several long-term plans
advanced over the last decade by the Tokyo metropolitan government. But in
implementing such plans, a number of policy considerations arise - that involve,
for example, the promotion of desirable land uses and the development of a
transportation network to support urban activities. Would it make more sense to
give priority to the restriction of business functions in the central area, or
to the development of new areas, away from the inner city, to accommodate such
functions? Both might be desirable goals - but realistically impossible to
implement at the same time.

Two Pressing Issues: Government Offices, the Bay Area

Two of the most pressing issues facing Tokyo at the moment are the
relocation of the metropolitan government offices and the development of a
waterfront sub-centre along Tokyo Bay.

In September 1985, Tokyo Governor Shunichi Suzuki presented a
proposal to the Metropolitan Assembly for the relocation of the metropolitan
government office (which will be known as City Hall) to Shinjuku, one of the
city's major sub-centres. The new government office was opened in April of this
year.

This relocation is in accordance with the Tokyo Metropolitan
Government's idea of diverting business functions from the central area, first
outlined in the national Capital Region Development Plan over three decades ago
in 1958. It is hoped that such a move will serve as a pilot project in the
conversion of Tokyo's urban structure into a more multi-centred one.

The Waterfront: Reclaiming Tokyo Bay

The past decade has seen a rapidly increasing conversion of
previously residential sites in the downtown areas to office space. The process
has been accelerated by the internationalization of Tokyo and its recognition as
a key nodal point in global communications, financial and otherwise. With this
change, however, has come a distortion of the city's traditional role as a place
to live, work and relax.

To help counter this, the metropolitan government has been
encouraging businesses to relocate in the waterfront area along Tokyo Bay, with
the anticipation that it will also supply housing. The basic plan for the
development of the waterfront sub-centre was announced in March 1988. It is
hoped that this will lead to the establishment of a totally new Tokyo sub-centre
- often referred to as a "city of the future."

The waterfront plan calls for the creation of a sub-centre with a
proper balance of employment, residential and leisure facilities on 448 hectares
of reclaimed land. Eventually, it is anticipated that the waterfront project
will house 60,000 people and provide employment for some 110,000 workers. A key
concept is that of creating a comfortable space, where diverse urban functions
are effectively and systematically anticipated. There will be facilities for
business activities, such as the Tokyo Teleport and an international exhibition
site, along with urban housing and cultural and recreational facilities.

A view of Tokyo's Shinjuku district

Undoing the Centralized Society

Over the last 100 years, Japan has permitted Tokyo to expand into
a huge metropolis, out of a desire to create a centralized society. Today,
however, as the harmful effects of excessive centralization become more and more
apparent, the notion that society needs to decentralize is gaining acceptance.
Changing the structure of the Tokyo Metropolitan Region into a multi-centred one
is a difficult task - but we have made a start. The wisdom which we will draw
upon from the participants in this conference - representing large cities around
the world - will help us shape our
future.

Seoul: Still a metropolis in the making

By Sang-Chuel Choe

The capital of the Republic of Korea, Seoul, has grown over the
last 40 years - when it first flashed on world consciousness with the outbreak
of the Korean War - from an rather obscure national capital to one of the
world's major urban centres, which, in 1988, hosted the Olympic Games. By the
year 2000, it is projected to be the seventh largest city on the globe; its
population now is increasing by about 500 persons a day.

How to manage such a vast urban conglomeration? The problems of
coping with such growth are discussed in the following article by Dr. Sang-Chuel
Choe of Seoul National University, which is excerpted from his paper presented
to the symposium on the mega-cities and population growth. Dr. Choe is on the
faculty of the School of Environmental Studies at the National
University. - Editor

The phenomenal growth of Seoul is both consequence of and impetus
for the unprecedented change that has transformed the Republic of Korea from a
pastoral, preindustrial society into one of the world's fastest growing
economies. The transformation of the country has been abrupt and pervasive - and
Seoul has had a pivotal role in this process.

In 1960, Seoul did not appear in the ranks of the world's 25
largest cities. By 1980, it has risen 15th. By the year 2000, it is projected to
be the 7th largest city on the globe. As of 1989, the population of central
Seoul was approaching 11 million people - and was estimated to be increasing by
about 500 persons a day.

But another aspect of Seoul's urban growth is the swelling
population in the city's total metropolitan area, including its contiguous
municipalities. Until 1970, there were only three cities that fell within this
area - Inchon, Suwon and Uijongbu. Over the last 20 years, a total of 12 cities
have been incorporated in these areas surrounding Seoul.

Central City vs. Suburbs

Until 1980, the population growth in central Seoul outpaced that
of its outlying metropolitan areas. The trend then reversed, and the satellite
cities surrounding the capital began to growth faster than central Seoul itself.
It is noteworthy, however, that the Seoul metropolitan area as a whole is still
growing faster than the national average - both in terms of population and the
number of manufacturing establishments.

What this means is that the interregional decentralization
strategy, which the government has seriously pursued and implemented over the
last three decades, has not worked very well. This is precisely what some of us
were worried about, from the very beginning, in these particular
decentralization policies.

(1) they promoted satellite cities too close to Seoul,
with the risk that they would eventually become engulfed as the boundaries of
the metropolis ballooned outward over time;

(2) these satellite cities might pull migrants and resources from
other regions of the nation, rather than attracting firms and households from
Seoul itself - the latter being a major aim of the satellite city
strategy.

Plans Gone Astray

As a consequence of these policies, more than 4 out of 10
residents of the Republic are now living in the Seoul Metropolitan Area - that
is within a 40-kilometre radius of central Seoul. The population share of the
Seoul Metropolitan Area has grown from 21 per cent of the South Korean
population in 1960 to 41 per cent in 1988. There is no clear sign that this
trend will fade out.

Given this rapid pace of urban growth, the question of land supply
and the management of urban land has been a key issue. The gross density per
hectare in Seoul today is 328 - one of the highest in the world and it seems
bound to get worse. As the available built-up areas within the jurisdiction of
Seoul dry up, and further sprawl beyond the city boundary is artificially
constrained by the green belt introduced in 1971, it is projected that that
average population density in Seoul will be up to about 380 per hectare by the
year 2000. (By way of comparison, Tokyo's density is about 115.4 persons per
hectare.)

Go Out or Co Up?

There are two basic ways to meet ever-increasing population
pressure for land in an urban setting. One is to go out - building large-scale
new settlements beyond the green belt. The central government complex has
already been relocated to the new industrial cities of Ansan and Kwacheon to the
south of inner Seoul. Two more ambitious new town developments are planned: in
Pundang, south-east of the central, and Ilsan to the north-west. The two new
towns, meant to accommodate 400,000 and 300,000 inhabitants respectively, are
intended to relieve pressure for residential land in the central city.

But these two new towns line just beyond the green belt - about 20
kilometres from downtown Seoul, and too close to it to be self-sustaining in
terms of employment and urban services. They will be, I fear, de facto
extensions of Seoul proper and contribution to the growth of the Seoul
metropolitan area as a whole.

The effectiveness of the green belt as a means of controlling
urban growth has been questioned. Originally it was envisioned that land in the
central city, which was encircled by the green belt, would be protected by that
policy. But it has now been learned that as population pressure increases, land
development tends to go its own way beyond the green belt, where desired or not.

Another way to accommodate land demand is to, in effect, go up -
heightening the overall density of the existing built-up area by the
redevelopment of low-density residential areas, squatter settlements, and other
unwanted encroachments on public open space. To this end, areas of single
detached residences have been replaced by row houses and high-rise apartments.
Squatter improvement programmes, usually combined with the clearing of squatter
areas for high-rise apartment complexes, are taking place everywhere in Seoul.

The Squatters

But serious tensions have built up between the squatter
settlements and the developers acting as surrogates of the middle-income class.
Direct confrontations have commonly broken into tragic clashes; this is becoming
a great social problem. Squatter settlements, which came to occupy many
hill-side areas in the 1950s after the Korean War, have superior locations:
close to the city centre with relatively cheap land prices due to complications
in land ownership titles.

The squatters are easily exposed to the whims of the real estate
developers - and the latter are implicitly endorsed by the city authorities who
are also concerned with the improvement of Seoul's physical appearance and
skyline. The city government thus finds itself as an arbitrator, representing,
on the one hand, the socio-economic well-being of the squatters, and on the
other, the overcoming of housing land shortage. In many instances, the city has
been the loser - and it is still trying to solve this stalemate.

Korea is experiencing great distortions in its land markets, often
expressed in unthinkable land prices - an escalation due largely to a range of
economic and demographic growth along with a rapid increase in personal wealth.
Land is considered one of the safest forms of investment, a hedge against actual
and anticipated inflation, and it is acquired by the newly rich not so much with
its physical use in mind but rather as a form of security against economic
uncertainty.

Land ownership in Seoul is strongly skewed - to the extent that
about 72 per cent of the households do not own a piece of land. The upper 5 per
cent of the households own 57.7 per cent of the total land. And land prices in
the urban areas have increased 8.4 times from 1975 to 1988.

Perhaps the single important determinant of increasing income
inequalities in urban households is the unearned income segment resulting from
land price escalation. Land speculation is widely practised. Housing
affordability for Seoul's low and middle-income households has gradually
worsened. For those at the lower end of the economic ladder, the land cost
component, out of their total housing price, has increased faster than their
income and savings. At the other end of the ladder, the urban rich own land that
is accumulating in asset value, and enjoy windfall benefits from land price
escalation.

Shredding the Social Fabric

As a consequence of these various forces, the socio-economic
fabric sustaining the stability of Korean society - which has been characterized
by a relatively egalitarian distribution since the land reforms of 1949 - has
begun to tear apart and shred. This has led, in turn, to a degradation of the
work ethic, the overburdening of land acquisition costs for urban public works,
and a pervasive sense of deprivation among many Korean homeowners themselves.

The government has recently introduced various policy measures to
curb land speculation. In particular, direct government intervention into land
markets was introduced in 1990. This includes, among other measures, a maximum
ceiling on residential land ownership in Seoul at 660 square metres, and a limit
on real estate profits on specified projects (in simple terms, anything earned
above the limit must be turned over to the government). It is too early to
evaluate the effectiveness of these strident new measures and their impact on
land markets in Seoul. What is clearly needed, however, is some sort of enabling
mechanism that would help ensure a smooth supply of land at reasonable prices,
while at the same time preventing unruly land speculation, improving urban
services, and enhancing the social well-being of the underprivileged of this
mega-city's
people.

Asia's growing urban rings

By T.G. McGee

The image of millions of rural peasant farmers and their
families pouring from the hinterlands into the glitter of downtown Jakarta,
Seoul or Manila, argues Terence McGee, is a very misleading one. More likely,
the new arrivals have come from the part rural, part urban rings surrounding the
central cities, where they were engaged in a mix of agricultural and industrial
activity.

These regions - which he calls "desakotas" (or
village-towns) - pose new analytical challenges for Asia's urban planners, who
have been ill-served, he says, by the "mental baggage of concepts and
ideas" that have grown out of the Western urbanizing experience. Professor
McGee is Director of the Institute of Asian Research, at the University of
British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. The following is taken from his
presentation to the Tokyo mega-cities conference. - Editor

I would throw out the challenge that the body of Western-derived
urban theory should be evaluated carefully as it is applied to the experience of
urbanization in Asia. Very different sets of conditions are operating in Asia
today than those which occurred in the Western industrialized countries in the
19th and 20th centuries.

The conventional wisdom on the transition from rural to urban
society seems to me to be inadequate in three respects. First, it is too narrow
in its view that the widely-accepted spatial separation of rural and urban
activities wilt persist. Second, it is off in its assumption that the rural to
urban movement is an inevitable result of economic advantages resulting from
urban population concentrations. (In many parts of Asia, the population
densities in the countryside are similar to those of the urban areas which they
surround.)

Third, the western paradigm of urban transition is based on the
historical experience of that process as it occurred in Western Europe and North
America in the 19th and 20th centuries. This is not necessarily transferable to
Asia's urbanization process. Among other historical factors, the uneven
incorporation of the Asian countries into a world economic system - from the
15th century onwards - created divergent patterns of urbanization, reflecting
different historical interactions between Asian countries and the world system.

Needs of the "Urban Revolution"

A major question must be whether Asian countries can experience a
structural transformation in their economies which is associated with an
"urban revolution," and the successful absorption of the labour
force into their urban economies during this transition.

Various projections make it clear that during the closing two
decades of the 20th century, urban growth rates in Asia cannot accommodate the
overall population increases or the shift of people from rural areas -
suggesting that population growth will continue in rural areas.

There are, of course, major regional differences. In Asian
countries like Japan or Taiwan, the urbanization process is largely completed.
In others - for example, Thailand - the situation is changing so rapidly that it
is hard to know where to place them. Still another category are those countries
where the rates of population increase remain high, urbanization levels are
changing little, and the proportion of the labour force in agriculture has
remained fairly constant. Finally, there is China, whose patterns of economic
development and urbanization are different from the rest of Asia - particularly
in terms of the fluctuations in levels of urbanization.

In studying this "mix" of urban-rural interaction,
several points should be underlined:

· There is little doubt that significant
improvements in agricultural technology and production - together with the
opening up of new land and the improvement of old land - have led to increased
agricultural productivity in many Asian nations. But this has not been
sufficient to prevent an increase in the absolute number of people in the
poverty sector, even though the proportion may be falling.

· A shift often ignored in many analyses is the movement of
labour from farm to non-farm sectors within rural areas. While there are serious
statistical problems here, most data suggest that approximately 20 to 30 per
cent of rural workers throughout Asia may be regarded as employed in
non-agricultural activities as a major source of income - and that probably that
proportion is increasing. The importance of off-farm employment is
well-illustrated by the experience of Japan, Taiwan and the Republic of Korea;
the growth of off-farm employment to some extent parallels overall economic
development.

The nature of the growth in opportunities for earning off-farm
income is also illuminating. Structurally, rural non-farm activities are
dominated by manufacturing. Within that sector, tobacco and beverage
manufacturing appear to be the most important in the rural industries in
Malaysia (61.7 per cent) and India (47.5 per cent). Textile and footwear
manufacture is more dominant in Bangladesh (58.2 per cent), Pakistan (39.6 per
cent) and the Philippines (46.4 per cent).

The service sector also appears to be of growing importance in the
rural economies of South and South-East Asian countries. In some instances, this
appears to be a "low productivity" type of service occupation. In
the Philippines, for example, there are indications that the informal sector -
such as small-scale trading and domestic and personnel services - form an
important segment of the rural non-agricultural sector. In a country like Sri
Lanka, where free education is available, educated rural poor seek
government-related service employment.

While this growth of rural non-agricultural activities is not the
only factor influencing the patterns of urbanization and labour force
absorptions, it is a very important factor in the Asian context. It is important
to emphasize that the proximity to urban centres is a major factor increasing
non-agricultural incomes in rural households. It might even be argued that such
forces are slowing the process of rural-urban transition - by
"holding" populations in areas defined as "rural." But
in my view these holding areas are rapidly becoming giant urban regions.

In many ways, the traditional Western rural-urban paradigm - with
its clearly demarked boundaries between "country" and
"city" - confuses urbanization and labour force questions in Asia.
Let me argue here for a new set of definitions of spatial configurations in and
around major urban areas. In particular, I would like to focus on those lands
stretching along the linear corridors between large city cores, in which there
is an intense mixture of agricultural and non-agricultural activities - a region
which I have labelled, "desakota." (Desakota is a
coined Indonesian term from the two words, kota (town) and desa
(village), originally adopted after discussions with Indonesian social
scientists. It reflects my belief that there is a need to look for terms and
concepts in the languages of third world countries which reflect the empirical
reality of their societies. - TGM)

Share of Off-Farm Income in East Asian Farm Families

Countries

1965

1975

1980

Japan

54%

66%

79%

Taiwan

27%(1966)

48%

66%

Republic of Korea

16%

16%

20%

The Desakotas

These regions - at one and the same time rural and urban areas -
are characterized by large populations engaged in small-holder cultivations
(mostly rice). Now engaged in many non-agricultural practices, they were
previously largely agricultural. There is now a great mix of occupations - often
in the same families. One person may commute to work as a clerk, another engages
in farming, a third in industry, and a fourth in the retailing in the
desakota zone.

These zones are generally characterized by an extreme fluidity and
mobility of populations. The availability of cheap transport, such as two-stroke
motorbikes, buses and trucks has facilitated relatively quick movement over
longer distances. Thus these zones are characterized both by commuting to the
larger urban centres as well as by intense movement of people and goods within
the zone. They tend to have an intense mixture of land-use with agriculture,
cottage-industry, industrial estates, suburban development and other uses
existing side by side.

Negative and Positive Aspects

This intense land-use mix can have both negative and positive
aspects. On the one hand, the waste of industrial activity can pollute and
destroy agricultural land - these zones, on the whole, are much more intensively
used than those of the central metropolitan area. On the other, the desakota
zones have provided opportunities for increased participation by females in
non-agricultural labour freeing them from their traditional field tasks.

I think the implications of the desakota zones are
important for the future of Asian urbanization. Such zones undoubtedly are
productive, catalytic regions for economic growth. At the same time, such
regions can be extraordinarily difficult to handle. The mixture of activities
often creates serious environmental, transportational and infrastructural
problems - and particularly if such regions are as part of the
"conventional" city planning mind-set. But their mixed,
decentralized and small-scale economic organizations offer exciting prospects.
The challenge to urban planners is how to take advantage of the positive aspects
of these new sorts of urban rings, while controlling their negative
ones.

"A giant supermarket..." - Is there anything good about mega-cities?

By Andrew Marshall Hamer

The point was made over and over again at the Tokyo conference:
huge urban conglomerations - anywhere in the world but particularly in the
developing nations - tend to debase the human spirit, not lift it. But is there
good news about the urban life? Might it be possible to create urban centres
like those characterized by Ferdinand Braudel as "electric
transformers" that "constantly recharge human life."

Today's urban planners, Andrew Marshall Hamer suggests, often
overlook the positive economic aspects of urbanization. Immigrants from the
countryside tend to be the best, the brightest and the youngest. Yet those who
stay behind can also benefit, from tighter rural labour markets and remittances.
The excerpt is taken from Dr. Hamer's paper delivered at the Tokyo mega-cities
symposium. He is Principal Sector Economist at The World Bank in Washington, DC
(USA). - Editor

If one were to differentiate the perspective of the urban
economist from those often prevalent among other disciplines - urban planners,
sociologist, geographers and demographers - it would be necessary to focus on
two or three areas of disagreement, all linked by a common thread: whether or
not third world mega-city development is doomed to systemic failure or not.

A major issue is the degree of rationality involved in individual,
household and enterprise behaviour in the process of urbanization. Here the
urban economist is more likely to conclude that the evidence suggests an absence
of pathological behaviour and the essential soundness of many individual rural
responses to the obvious economic incentives offered in the urban areas. One
might contrast this with the social engineering approaches that seek to impose
"order" on an "unruly" urban world.

If one looks at the top ten mega-cities of the developing world,
it could be argued that size, and its implications, are largely in the eyes of
the beholder. One has to ask if, in the abstract, the sheer numbers contribute
very much to our understanding of issues and options. Do these numbers, in fact,
serve little more than to alarm the uninitiated and create an assumption of
unmanageability? The growth rates of the constituent parts of these mega-cities
differ widely from one another, with low or even negative growth rates in the
densest core and higher growth rates at the low density periphery.

What we have, really, are polycentric clusters of identifiable and
separate cities and towns that require both regional trunk infrastructures and
local urban management - or much the same thing that a province or a small
country might need. And would anyone be alarmed to hear that there are small
countries and provinces with an urban population of 10-20 million? In short, to
treat the totality of these residents of one city, even if we use the prefix
"mega," is to pervert the common sense definition of what a
"city" is. Size perse is not the issue. Instead it is
mismanagement at both the regional; and local level, and wrong-headed
urbanization policies, promoted by physical planners with their eyes on
geography and very little sense of economics.

Why Do Mega-Cities Exist?

Economic development and urbanization are joint products of a
wealth-creating process that generates large urban regions where per capital
output exceeds the national average by a factor of 2-5 times. It seems clear
that maximizing economic growth, a key objective for most countries that are
poor, is facilitated by a concentrated "city-states" model of
urbanization - at least until these countries reach middle income status.

By focusing activity in a relatively small portion of the nation's
landscape when national income is low, governments reap the so-called
"urbanization" economies of agglomeration - that is, for many
economic activities, the production cost per unit goes down as the population
size goes up.

Simultaneously, these "city-states" conserve
investments in regional infrastructures for transport, communications, power and
water supply. In such agglomerations, one can gather, on a cost-effective basis:
a labour force with a wide array of skills; a large number of suppliers;
diversified financial and commercial services; venture capital; access to
information on foreign markets and technologies; as well as the social amenities
(in for example, health and education) needed to attract managerial talent.

It is in such places that a low-income economy can reap the
benefits of a rapid diffusion of new skills and technologies. At the same time,
the local market will place concentrated purchasing power at the doorstep of the
business community. In effect, the mega-city becomes a giant supermarket with
the greatest array of choices in the country.

Variety: Spice of Urban Life

What proves most interesting when examining case studies across
mega-cities - with regard to income distribution, poverty, access to services,
and housing - is the great variety of outcomes. This immediately suggests
that country-specific factors and governance issues are more important than size
in almost all cases. (The exception would appear to be where environmental
issues are involved. That is to say, the river basin or air shed capacity of a
given land area on which a mega-city is built may be limited enough so that the
mere concentration of people raises negative externality issues that require
pricing or regulation action.)

Looking at these case studies, there are examples of:

· Rapid growth in average per capita incomes -
in Bangkok, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Seoul - and virtual stagnation on the
same indicator, in Calcutta.

· From narrow to wide disparities in household income. In
Chinese mega-cities, it is about 3:1. Elsewhere, in São Paulo, Mexico City and
Metro Manila, for example, ratios of 20:1 or more are common. (The ratio refers
to the top decile's average household income compound to the bottom deciles.
- Editor)

· The percentage of the urban population which is poor is
lower than in rural areas. Because the wealthy are more concentrated in
mega-cities than elsewhere, rural income distributions tend to be more equal
than urban ones.

· Cases with widespread slums, and cases where these are no
longer a significant problem. Among the latter are Seoul, Bangkok, Beijing and
Tianjin, all in Asia.

· Public utilities that provide near universal access to
public services like water or solid waste collection - as in Seoul, Beijing and
Shanghai - and cities that do not.

Poverty Not a Migrant Problem

The poverty problem - even if one focuses on it after
acknowledging that the poor are not representative of the mega-city population -
can be viewed from a less pessimistic perspective than is currently fashionable.
Much poverty is temporary and related to life-cycle factors - particularly when
viewed from the perspective of individual households, be they migrants or
natives. In general, the poverty problem in cities is not a migrant problem and
it is not susceptible to city-size controls. When it occurs, migration is
sensible; it is not an irrational form of behaviour that automatically produces
poverty.

The revulsion caused by low-income households in mega-cities has
fostered a "myth of marginality" - one in which these poor have been
characterized as unemployed loafers, abandoned women and children,
"thieves, drunks, and prostitutes." This view has been buttressed by
the hypothesis that urban labour markets function in a kind of perverse manner.

For example, some explanations of the rural to urban movement have
focused on the appeal of a high-wage manufacturing sector. In such scenarios,
migrants relocate in large numbers hoping to win an employment lottery that
entitles them to a secure, high-paying urban job. While waiting for a winning
"ticket," these migrants crowd into slums where they experience
prolonged, if indeed not permanent, periods of underemployment. This is the
basis for the so-called "Harris-Todaro" hypothesis.*

In fact, the evidence available on urban labour markets in
developing countries suggests that this hypothesis is derived from poor or
incomplete data. The immigrants from the countryside are, on average, rapidly
assimilated into urban labour markets. Their earnings are linked not to their
migrant status but their human capital endowment. The earnings of the migrant
labour force are high enough, on average, to justify the decision to migrate -
given the level of income they could be expected had they remained in the rural
sector.

In fact, the so-called "informal" labour market,
viewed as a dumping ground in the Harris-Todaro scheme, yields a distribution of
income rewards that overlap to a significant extent with that of the so-called
"formal" sector. They come because, on average, their youth and
their above average education are best utilized in an urban environment.

The very poorest and the least educated rural workers, of course,
remain largely immobilized in the countryside. But these poor who stay behind,
many studies show, benefit from tighter rural labour markets and remittances. In
sum, there is little evidence that poverty in the sending rural areas is
worsened by migration. In addition, there is no evidence that migration causes
the incomes of city natives to
fall.

The emerging world city system

By Fu-chen Lo

Powerful economic and technological forces, argues Fu-chen Lo,
are bringing about sharply changed configurations in the world city system. Most
notable is the emergence of cities in East and South-East Asia as world finance
and trade centres - forming a new urban "growth corridor" on the
world scene. Meanwhile, the great urban centres of Europe and North America that
have dictated economic trends for several centuries are experiencing medium
growth rates as they deindustrialize and change over from blue-collar to service
economies. At the bottom of the heap - and, tragically, probably for some time
to come - are the cities of Africa and Latin America, driven by debt, inflation,
and massive inflows of rural migrants into a spiralling stagnation.

The many factors at play in this vast reshaping of urban
patterns were discussed by Dr. Lo in a paper he presented to the Tokyo
conference, and from which the following article is excerpted. A specialist in
development economics, he is a Senior Academic Officer at the UNU. -
Editor

The rise and stagnation of the OPEC cities; the debt burden of
Latin American metropolises; the collapse of commodity prices and stagnation of
import-substitution industries in African urban centres - along with the rising
role of Tokyo and other Asian cities as new dominant trade and financial centres
- clearly demonstrate how the major metropolitan centres of the world have been
affected by the global economic adjustments that have been occurring in recent
years. A new wave of techno-economic patterns is in the process of replacing the
old production paradigm and reshaping, in the decades to come, the major
metropolitan centres both in developed and developing countries.

Lewis Mumford wrote in 1961 that "megalopolis is fast
becoming a universal form, and the dominant economy is a metropolitan economy,
in which no effective enterprise is possible without a close tie to a big
city." Whether they should be called megalopolis, mega-city or world city,
the role of the dominant cities is increasing associated with a nation's
economic capacity and its external linkages as global economic interdependence
has become more and more a reality in the post-World War II world. But
particularly during the last decade, the world economy has undergone a series of
upheavals which are changing the configurations of the mega-cities.

Uneven Economic Growth

Global adjustments which took place in the early 1980s continue to
transform the world economy into a pattern of uneven growth among the major
economic blocs. East and South-East Asia are leading with the highest growth
rates, while the United States, the EC, and the rest of the world remain at a
much lower level. The process of uneven growth and regionalization of world
economic development is not a short-term phenomenon. It is mid-term to long-term
in scale and structural in nature.

One of the key issues in the world economy today is the unresolved
third world debt problem - estimated currently at US$1.2 trillion. Since 1984,
there has been a net capital outflow from the third world to the industrialized
countries. Despite numerous efforts in debt rescheduling and negotiations, this
outflow had reached US$50 billion a year by 1990, and it is likely to continue
for sometime.

The current third world debts and economic stagnation are largely
attributed to the collapse of the prices of oil and other primary commodities in
the early 1980s. As most of the developing countries are heavily dependent on
commodity exports for their foreign exchange earnings (which, in turn,
underwrite their industrialization), the collapse of commodity prices has led to
serious and widespread economic crises in the third world - in Africa, Latin
America, the OPEC bloc, and other commodity-exporting developing nations.

Copper vs. Optical Fibres

A structural problem that comes into play here is the long-term
decline of material inputs needed by the industrialized economies - that is, to
a large extent, the raw materials and other inputs provided by imports from the
third world. In Japan, for example, it is estimated that it now only requires 50
to 60 per cent of resource inputs to produce the same level of GNP as a decade
ago. A declining share of material inputs in a given product has been spreading
across most of the high valued trade manufacturing products, including
automobiles, machinery and electronic related goods. New innovations in
micro-electronics and communications, robotics technology, biotechnology and new
materials have gradually become the fast growth and dominating sectors in the
developed countries and some of the newly industrialized economies. The copper
of Chile and Zambia, to cite just one example, is needed less and less; it is
being replaced by more efficient optical fibres produced by high-tech northern
industries.

The changing trade patterns that have emerged among the countries
of East Asia, and between them and the United States and the European Economic
Community, are the result of the rapid industrialization that took place in the
70s and early 80s among the Asian countries. Part of this is explained by the
shift in the newly industrialized economies (NIEs) away from light manufacturing
to durable consumer goods and machinery products, and the shift in the ASEAN
countries* from raw material export to manufacturing exports. From these
shirting patterns a new industrial belt has emerged within the global economy
and within the world city system. Three groupings can be discerned:

* Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore,
Thailand.

· Group One - Debt and Dependency

The Latin American and African cities are plagued by high debt,
high inflation and high dependency on primary commodities. These cities face
immense difficulty in financing structural adjustment and urban infrastructural
expenditures. Stagnation of commodity prices has also led to massive rural to
urban migration - which escalates the pressure to expand the stock of urban
infrastructure. Heavy external lending and sluggishness in commodity export
earnings is further retarding urban development. This spiral of stagnation casts
a dark shadow in immediate recovery of cities in these countries.

· Group Two - Blue-Collar vs. Service

In the medium growth group lies a whole range of cities from both
developed and developing countries. The cities in the United States and Western
Europe - New York, Chicago, London, Paris, Milan, etc. - have been suffering
from the trend of deindustrialization in the 1970s accompanied by a continuous
decline of blue-collar jobs in the traditional industrial centres. It is also
evident that the structural change of these metropolitan areas corresponds with
the increasing role of the service sector.

Lately a new trend of information processing and high-technology
industries has begun to serve as the impulse for future growth. But this does
not necessarily coincide with some of the old metropolises. In Europe, the
opening of East European cities and the impending integrated EC market is
expected to stimulate industrial revitalization with an increasing role for high
technology.

· Group Three - World's New Growth Corridor

The cities with high economic growth rates have been highly
concentrated in East and South-East Asia. These cities have witnessed a
phenomenal expansion in their share in world trade and production. Tokyo has
emerged as a world financial centre as Japan has assumed the role of the largest
creditor in the world. Many Asian economies have also experienced a two-digit
growth rate in the recent past. Trade and inter-industrial linkages, together
with a massive flow of capital, the Asian NIEs, the ASEAN countries and Japan
have led to rapid growth and structural transformation. A network of Asian
cities is expected to form a new growth corridor in the world city system.

Long Waves and World Cities

In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in the
notion of long waves of economic structural changes - 50-to-60-year-cycles of
economic fluctuation, often known as "Kondratieff cycles" (after the
Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff who developed the theory in the 1920s.)
Innovation is seen as the fundamental impulse which sets and keeps the economic
engine in motion.

Briefly, it is proposed that the world economy has undergone
fourth Kondratieff cycles since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in
18th-century Europe. In the first long wave (1770s - 1830s), clusters of
innovation in steam engines, iron casting, textiles and mechanization brought
with it the factory organization and the emergence of British supremacy in trade
and international finance. There was rapid expansion of retail and wholesale
trade in new urban centres.

In the second Kondratieff wave (1830s-1890s), railway and steam
power were the dominant technologies and overcame the limitations of water
power. Britain continued to lead during this wave and was joined by France,
Germany and the United States. Modern urban centres in the major industrial
countries emerged, interconnected by railways and seaports - including colonial
control of the third world resources and seaports.

In the third wave (1880s-1930s), Germany and the United States
took over the lead from Britain in applying electrical and heavy engineering and
steel technology in overcoming the limitations of iron as an engineering
material. An important phenomenon was the rise of mega-cities such as London and
New York as major commodity markets as well as banking and finance centres.

By the fourth wave (1930s-1980s), Britain had lost its preeminence
to the United States and Germany, with Japan emerging as a latecomer. Fordist
mass production was the dominant technological paradigm, based on full
standardization of components. The United States had the advantage in cheap
energy resources with the requisite technology to tap mass markets.

The fourth wave coincided with the post-world war industrial
development of most of the third world countries. The availability of relatively
cheap and abundant resources witnessed a massive build up in production
capacity. The economies of both the North and South were becoming increasingly
interdependent, with cross border flows of raw materials, goods, capital and
technology. The major cities began to assist in the process of globalization and
integration of the economies of nations.

Now - The Fifth Wave

It has been argued that a fifth Kondratieff cycle has emerged in
the late 1980s, with clusters of new innovations in computers, electronics and
telecommunications, new materials, biotechnology and robotics becoming the
leading growth sector in the world economy.

The mega-cities have shown great potential to tape these new
rapidly-growing knowledge-intensive industries. In particular, Japan and its
mega-cities have demonstrated that they have the social and institutional
ability to exploit this new paradigm, and have assumed a new leadership role in
this area. The Japanese approach to mega-city management has also supported
regional policies which lay great stress on the development of
"technopolis," providing science, education, communications and
transport infrastructures. Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, North Kyushu, etc. have
consistently sought to strengthen technological and managerial capabilities to
service its new knowledge-intensive industries, both domestically and globally.
They have demonstrated clearly that the power of a mega-city of the future lies
in its capacity to identify and formulate policies on the basis of those new
technologies which are most likely to transform existing urban
patterns.

UNU update

The following is from an information circular prepared for use
within the immediate UNU system. We think such reports may be of interest to the
worldwide readership of WORK. IN PROGRESS. - Editor

· Agreements on the establishment of the UNU International
Institute for Software Technology (UNUIIST) were signed in Macau in March
between the University, the Governments of Portugal and China and the Governor
of Macau. UNUIIST is the first international institute devoted to helping build
modern software technology capability in developing countries. It is envisaged
that US$30 million will be contributed to the UNU Endowment Fund in respect of
UNUIIST. The Institute is expected to start operations shortly in Macau with a
core staff of professional and supporting personnel on the income derived from
an initial fund of $20 million contributed to the Endowment Fund ($5 million
each from the Governments of Portugal and China, and $10 million from the
Governor of Macau), and an additional $10 million which will be obtained from
other sources through the Governor of Macau by the end of 1995. UNUIIST is the
latest addition to the global network of UNU research and training centres and
programmes. It is the third programme of this type to be based in a developing
country.

· During the first quarter of 1991, the UNU received the
following contributions from member states of the United Nations and private
foundations:

Austria - AS 100,000 (US$9,470), endowment contribution

Brazil - US$54,256, operating contribution

Egypt - US$50,000, operating contribution

Finland - FM2.782.800 (US$766,612), UNU/WIDER (UNU World
Institute for Development Economics Research) research project on Transformation
of Centrally Planned Economies: the Lesson for Developing Countries

· The Government of Italy has made the first payment of 30
million Lire (US$30,000) on an earlier pledge of 300 million Lire to initiate
planning for an international consultative meeting at the University of Sassari
which will explore the feasibility of a UNU programme on marine science and
ocean affairs.

· An international conference on Climatic Impacts on the
Environment and Society was held in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, (27 January - 1
February), under the auspices of the University of Tsukuba. Some 150 scientific
papers were presented and discussed. The conference, which provided a valuable
opportunity for further UNU-Tsukuba collaboration, was an important step in
promoting the international network on climate-related impact assessment. The
conference was jointly organized with the Second World Climate Conference (held
last year in Geneva) and the Japan Study Group for the World Climate Impact
Programme.

· Twenty-three participants from Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and
Cameroon took part in a seminar on Development of High Protein Energy Foods in
Accra, Ghana, in February. The seminar reviewed the research and training
activities in the area of high protein energy foods under the joint AAU/UNU
Regional Food and Nutrition project in Africa.

· A high-level UNU-UNESCO meeting was held in Paris in
February to identify possible areas of cooperation for the 1992-93 biennium and
the medium-term programmes of both organizations, and to review follow-up
activities on current joint projects. The discussions included, among others:
(a) future science and technology policies workshops; (b) BIOLAC (UNU Programme
for Biotechnology in Latin America and the Caribbean) cooperation with UNESCO /
UNIDO / UNDP programmes; and (c) environmental programmes, such as the
UNESCO-MAB continued cooperation and support for the UNU's Mountain Ecology and
Development project, the planned assistance to UNU/INRA (UNU Institute for
Natural Resources in Africa), and possible joint sponsorship of some of the
conferences in the Frontiers of Science series. Also reviewed were possible
joint activities with the University's research and training centres, UNU /
WIDER, UNU / INTECH (UNU Institute for New Technologies) and, in the future,
UNUIIST.

· A feasibility study meeting to consider the proposed
establishment in the Thai capital of an International Programme for Veterinary
Diagnostic Technology was held in Bangkok in February. The international team at
the meeting held consultations with senior officials from Chulalongkorn
University, the Department of Livestock Development of the Ministry of
Agriculture and Cooperatives, and representatives of other government
departments, and of UN DP, FAO and ESCAP. The findings of the feasibility study
were presented to the UNU Council at its June meeting in Macau for its
preliminary consideration.

WORK IN PROGRESS aims at providing an edited sampling of the
research of the United Nations University in various stages of progress or
outside material related to it. It draws on reports, working papers, books,
periodicals and uses occasionally original articles. UNU copyrighted articles
may be reprinted without permission provided credit is given to WORK IN PROGRESS
(United Nations University) and a copy is sent to the Editor. French, Spanish
and Japanese editions are also available.

· Two meetings on the decision of the Government of Ghana to
host the UNU's Institute for Natural Resources in Africa were held in Accra in
February and April with the Office of the Provisional National Defence Council
Secretary for Education. An interim office for the Programme on Natural
Resources in Africa is at the UNESCO Regional Office in Nairobi, Kenya, and a
mineral resources unit in Lusaka, Zambia.

· The first UNU/INRA consultative meeting for eastern and
southern Africa was held in Lusaka, Zambia, in March. It reviewed the status of
potentials and constraints of natural resources in different parts of Africa.
Participants were brought up-to-date on the projected work of INRA and the need
to cooperate with African universities and institutes in human resource
development and capacity-building in the area of natural resources. Twenty-two
status reports on various aspects of natural resources in Africa have been
commissioned.

· Sir John Kendrew, former UNU Council chairman, and Dr.
Bernard Goldstein, Director of the Environmental and Occupation Health Sciences
Institute in the United States, are currently studying the possible work
programme on the proposed UNU institute on global environment and human health
as a joint effort of Ulm and Stuttgart Universities in Germany. A preliminary
report on their activities was presented to the Council at their June session.

· A UNU/WIDER project studying the lessons for developing
countries in the recent transformation of centrally planned economies held the
first of several planned meetings at WIDER in Helsinki in March. At the meeting,
a group of high-level policy-makers, academics and management consultants
discussed issues of industrial and competition policies in Eastern and Central
Europe and the Soviet Union.

· A training course on science and technology management,
attended by 26 professionals from all over Latin America, was held in Havana,
Cuba, in March. This was the first in a series of regional training courses in
science and technology policies being undertaken by the UNU in close cooperation
with UNESCO. The training courses draw largely upon the sourcebook,
"Science, Technology and Development," which the UNU is now in the
process of producing and will ultimately be published in English, French and
possibly other languages. Several Latin American authors of the sourcebook were
lecturers at the Havana course.

· The Korean Research Institute for Human Settlement in
Seoul hosted a UNU workshop in March on urban systems in the Asia-Pacific
region. The workshop was a follow-up activity to last year's mega-city symposium
(adaptations of some reports from this meeting are presented in this issue of
WORK IN PROGRESS), which had recommended a comparative study of Asian-Pacific
cities. Twelve scholars from the region participated in the workshop. The
project plans to publish two volumes on its research into future problems and
policies of Asian-Pacific mega-cities and urban systems.

· A conference on decentralization and alternative
rural-urban configurations was held in Sitges, Spain, in April. The meeting was
attended by 27 scholars from 17 countries. Papers presented concentrated
experiences and policy issues in the areas of political and administrative
development, governance and services, and revenues for specific services. The
conference was part of the process of determining the feasibility of the
proposed UNU research and training centre in Barcelona on governance, the state
and society.

· An interdisciplinary symposium concerned with the growing
body of knowledge on chaos theory was held in Tokyo in April. The symposium,
"The Impact of Chaos on Science and Society," brought together
mathematicians, physicists, natural scientists, engineers, economists and social
scientists for an exchange of experiences with chaotic behaviour and its
implications for future scientific inquiry. Among the speakers and participants
were some of the world leaders in the field of chaos research. The symposium was
the first of a new UNU series on Frontiers of Science and Technology.*

* Some reports from the chaos symposium will be the
main focus of the next issue of WORK IN PROGRESS. - Editor

A local Philippine edition of Conflict Over Natural Resources
in the South-East Asia and the Pacific, edited by Lim Teck Ghee and Mark J.
Valencia, originally published with Oxford University Press, Singapore, was
brought out by Ateneo de Manila University Press. The UNU Press is discussing
with prospective publishers a Japanese and an Italian edition of
Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a Global Failure (by Samir Amin); an
Italian edition of Meiji Ishin (by Nagai Michio and Miguel Urrutia); and
a Japanese edition of In Fairness to Future Generations: International Law,
Common Patrimony and Intergenerational Equity (by Edith Brown
Weiss).